Various efforts have been made or proposed to determine consumer preference and demographic information through tracking consumer behavior and/or inferring behavior by analyzing financial data such as transaction records. For example, companies such as credit-card issuers have analyzed their vast stores of purchase records of consumers in order to determine spending habits. As another example, merchants such as grocery stores offer discount cards which may be used by the merchant to track the cardholder's grocery buying habits. As another example, consumer behavior may be tracked by devices used by the consumer, such as set-top boxes that provide information about the consumer's television viewing habits and computer applications that provide information about the consumer's Internet viewing habits (e.g., sites visited, etc.).
However, such efforts may suffer from several types of drawbacks. For instance, consumers concerned about privacy may avoid the use of services that track their behavior and/or otherwise aggregate consumer data. Another possible drawback includes the accuracy of information. For instance, in an effort to alleviate privacy concerns, some proposed systems generate a “profile” of a consumer that does not include any raw information (such as purchase records). However, such a profile is (at least) a level of abstraction away from the actual consumer's behavior and may be inaccurate.
A need remains for methods and systems that provide information about a user, such as a consumer, in a manner that is accurate but also respects the consumer's privacy and other interests in the information.